My First Flying Lesson - 9/11 Opinions

Originally posted by turbofan
Two weeks ago I was awarded a flying lesson for my birthday.

Awesome, it’s a lot fun, isn’t it?
You're making your first steps to being on the other side of the 911 debate.

Originally posted by turbofan
Cessna 150, single prop. aircraft.

Try out a Piper Tomahawk, its less stable, but IMHO it was more fun to fly. You have to work to keep it flying level, and afterward you will feel like you have had one hell of an upper body workout . I had to learn on these because they are roomier then the 150.

Originally posted by turbofan
So what does this mean for the official story? At any time terrorist stormed through the cockpit door of a 7x7, and tried to stab the pilots, either the captain, or co-pilot could have easily pulled up the yoke, or pushed down on the yoke sending the evil men slamming around the cabin.

Either pilot could have banked quickly and thrown the terrorists into the wall! There is no logical explanation that four aircraft with eight pilots failed to think of this simple defensive trick.

There are good reasons why they did not do this…

First, they had other passengers and crew on the aircraft that they didn't want to injure. These were commercial aircraft full of civilians after all. Plus the flight attendants would have been unbuckled, and up attending to the passengers at that time possibly with serving carts weighing several hundreds of pounds each. You throw a hundred plus pound person or catering cart into the air then have it slam into other passengers, and you could very well kill someone.

Second, prior to 911 the standard operating procedure for dealing with those situations and getting everyone off alive was to follow orders, but to try and get the aircraft on the ground as quickly as possible to allow the military or law enforcement to enact a rescue. The same way it had been done successfully many times in the past. Remember that no situation had ever played out like it did on 911 prior to 911, so they had no reason based on previous experience to believe that anyone would be intentionally ramming them into anything.

The terrorists in control of flight 93 did in fact slam the passengers around when they tried to re-take the cockpit. The reason being that they could have cared less about the safety of the passengers, unlike the flight crews.

Originally posted by turbofan
If I was able to control a Cessna 150 on a windy day and pretty much take off and fly the entire lesson (minus landing), then I wonder how Hani could not get a rental for such a simple airplane, or fly a Boeing 757!

As you will learn after you get your license, no one will allow you to check out an aircraft at an airport where they do not know you unless you do a check ride with a flight instructor first. It’s a money scam really to bill you for an extra hour with both the plane and the instructor. That is all that really happened in this instance as well, they would not allow him to rent the aircraft until he was willing to agree to a check ride.

Maybe a better question for you to ask is: if it was that easy for you to learn, how hard is it really? Flying is flying once the aircraft is in the air, and a 767 is not much harder to fly then a Cessna. Only the horn blowers at sites like P4T will tell you otherwise as they want everyone on the net to be impressed with their skills. Most of the difference in a large aircraft is in the preflight, take off, and landing, none of which these guys did nor planed to do.

Originally posted by turbofan
Check out the FedEx hi-jack and check out what these pilots did to save their lives:

There are no passengers or loose materials on a freight aircraft. Everything in them is locked down to the floor, and secured either in LD’s or on pallets.

Anyway enjoy your flight lessons, and stay safe.

Originally posted by laiguana
The hijackers measured 5'7 at the tallest. So these little guys with box cutter knives over-powered a bunch of people that could have collectively taken them out in a short amount of time.
The pilots could have thought up of more than a few ways of stopping the hijackers.

The problem was that they also claimed to have explosives. Again up to that point the SOP based on all pervious instances was to follow orders, and delay for time during negotiations until you could get on the ground somewhere so a raid could be planned and enacted.

Originally posted by laiguana
Bank robberies and thrift store robberies are thwarted all the time. Sometimes by the customers even when involving firearms. I don't see why in this instance over 70 passengers (flight 11) and over 60 passengers (flight 175) were all paralyzed by fear of these little men with box cutters, and made no attempts to stop them at all, allowing them to complete a difficult maneuver into the twin towers.

For the same reason that no one had stopped any previous attempts. Most people are afraid of flying to begin with, then you add in threat of physical violence, and a possible explosive, and people were not going to put up a fight pre-911 because most of these situations previously played out the same way. You got flown from city to city, landing occasionally to refuel while negotiations went on, until they either got their demands met, or were raided by law enforcement or the military. Pre-911 the safest route was simply to play along and keep quiet. People tend to be passive naturally, and especially so when they feel it’s the safest route. Now that has changed because people now realize that by being passive they are in just as much danger as they are through direct confrontation.

How many times did you hear news of passengers beating the crap out of an unruly passenger before 911? Because I don’t recall any… Now compare that to how many times after 911 have passengers gotten involved and beat the living crap out of someone for acting up on a flight?

Originally posted by laiguana
And yet flight 93, with less than 32 passengers, not including the hijackers made an effort to stop them, although none survived.

They only did so when they started to get news of what was happening to the other aircraft that day. When they realized that they were either going to die passively, or at least stand a chance by fighting, the decision for them became crystal clear. The fact that they were now in a lose/lose situation made them more apt to act to try and survive without as much fear of personal harm from direct physical confrontation.